Qatar Airways award redemptions have just become a lot more expensive. Not in terms of the number of Avios required, but in terms of the fees (thanks to Tim for flagging this)…

Qatar Airways increases redemption ticket surcharges

In the past couple of years, we’ve seen Qatar Airways make significant changes to how it releases award availability. Back in the day, the program released the same amount of award space to all partner programs as it did to its own Qatar Airways Privilege Club members, so redeeming on Qatar Airways was a real sweet spot of programs like American AAdvantage or Alaska Mileage Plan.

That’s no longer the case, as nowadays Qatar Airways makes most premium cabin award space available exclusively to those accruing Avios currencies, whether it’s Qatar Airways Privilege Club or British Airways Executive Club.

That hasn’t been the worst thing on earth, since fortunately redemption rates for Qatar Airways premium cabins have been quite attractive. Furthermore, Avios are at least really easy to accrue with transferable points currencies.

However, that has just changed in a major way, as Qatar Airways has significantly increased the surcharges it imposes on these redemptions:

• It looks like redemption surcharges have roughly doubled in many markets
• This applies whether you’re booking through Qatar Airways Privilege Club or British Airways Executive Club, or any other program that passes on surcharges; programs like American AAdvantage and Alaska Mileage Plan don’t pass on surcharges

So, how bad are the new fees? Let me give a few examples:

• A Male to Doha to Miami business class award now comes with a $500 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
• A Jakarta to Doha to New York business class award now comes with a $250 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
• A Chicago to Doha business class award now comes with a $200 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
• A Perth to Doha first class award now comes with a $200 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees
• A Frankfurt to Doha to Bangkok economy class award now comes with a $90 redemption fee, in addition to government imposed taxes and fees

This is a disappointing direction for Privilege Club

Admittedly loyalty programs tend to devalue over time, so I can’t say I’m surprised that the value of Privilege Club is worsening in some way. However, I find these kinds of surcharges to be the worst possible way to devalue a program.

While it’s not uncommon for some airlines to pass on carrier imposed surcharges on award tickets, typically those surcharges reflect the ones that would be charged when booking a revenue ticket. In the case of Privilege Club, though, these fees don’t even reflect the carrier imposed surcharges, but rather it’s a redemption fee.

These fees aren’t actually based on anything, they’re just intended to improve the economics of redemptions for the airline.

What’s interesting is that from 2018 to 2020, Qatar Airways had award redemption fees, whereby the airline added arbitrary fees to award tickets. The program then eliminated those, in an effort to improve the value of the program. But now these kinds of fees are higher than ever, so I guess that didn’t last long.

I’d say there’s still value to be had with redeeming for travel on Qatar Airways. However, it’s no doubt less lucrative than it used to be. Perhaps we should call this the caviar surcharge for business class redemptions. 😉

In fairness, Emirates Skywards has had ridiculously high fees on redemptions for a long time, so perhaps Qatar Airways is just catching up (in the worst way possible).

Bottom line

Qatar Airways has just greatly increased its cash fees for award redemptions. This applies when booking through Avios currencies, whether it’s Qatar Airways Privilege Club or British Airways Executive Club. Very roughly speaking, it looks like cash fees on these redemptions have doubled, so you can expect these awards to be much more costly.

What’s unfortunate is that the value proposition of Qatar Airways Privilege Club has improved in recent years, as Qatar Airways has pulled premium cabin award availability from partner programs. But with this change, it makes these redemptions much less lucrative…

What do you make of Qatar Airways increasing its redemption fees?